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Andrew Wylie
Andrew Wylie condemned the 'brutality' of Amazon’s tactics. Photograph: Eamonn Mccabe
Andrew Wylie condemned the 'brutality' of Amazon’s tactics. Photograph: Eamonn Mccabe

Top literary agent Andrew Wylie calls Amazon ‘Isis-like distribution channel’

This article is more than 9 years old
Wylie calls for fellow publishers to stand firm and ‘not to blink’ during negotiations over ebook royalties with digital retailer

He is the sinister “jackal” of the literary world who counts Salman Rushdie, Philip Roth and Martin Amis among his formidable roster of clients.

Andrew Wylie, arguably the most powerful literary agent in the world – who once described himself as a “ravenous dog” – has now sunk his teeth into Amazon, describing the online retailer as a “sort of Isis-like distribution channel”.

In a keynote speech to the international festival of authors in Toronto, Wylie condemned the “brutality” of Amazon’s tactics and made a call for fellow publishers to stand firm and “not to blink” during negotiations over royalties with the digital retailer.

Amazon, Wylie said, had “taken the business and distorted it radically”. In his speech, entitled the State of the Industry: What Matters for Writers, Wylie said he believed Amazon’s digital monopoly could be weakened.

“I believe with the restored health of the publishing industry and having some sense of where this sort of Isis-like distribution channel, Amazon, is going to be buried and in which plot of sand they will be stuck, [publishers] will be able to raise the author’s digital royalty to 40% or 50%,” he said. “Writers will begin to make enough money to live.”

He criticised publishers for ever agreeing to give Amazon 30% of digital profits, but was adamant that the tide was turning against the online giant.

Forming a united front, Wylie told the audience, could give publishers much-needed leverage over the distributor and help to ensure that authors were able to profit more from their digital book sales in the future.

Referring to Amazon as a “digital trucking company”, Wylie went on to state: “The publishing industry, up until now, has cowered and whined and moaned and groaned and given Amazon pretty much everything they want. Now I think that’s going to stop.”

Wylie, who has over three decades of experience in the literary world, has had a chequered relationship with Amazon. In 2010 he briefly collaborated with Amazon under his own digital venture, Odyssey Editions, to release digital editions of books including Lolita and Midnight’s Children.

It was an attempt to pressure publishing houses to offer higher digital royalties to his authors, bypassing publishers entirely. But after Random House refused to do business with the Wylie Agency, he backed down and pulled his digital imprint from the retailer.

Wylie also praised publisher Hachette for standing up to Amazon earlier this year, after a dispute escalated between the retailer and the publisher when Hachette refused to lower their digital book prices. Amazon responded at the time by making it virtually impossible to buy or order Hachette books, prompting an outcry from hundreds of authors.

“Hachette, to their great credit, drew a line in the sand and didn’t fold,” Wylie said.

This is not the first time he has made controversial comments about Amazon and its practices, having previously compared the retailer to Napoleon. In March he said: “If you have a choice between the plague and Amazon, pick the plague,” and went on to claim that it had a “publishing programme that stands out for its idiocy”.

Wylie was also a backer of Authors United, the coalition of more than 100 authors who denounced Amazon for purposefully hindering Hachette sales, and he recruited several of his most prominent authors – including Philip Roth, Orhan Pamuk, Salman Rushdie, VS Naipaul and Milan Kundera – to sign the petition.

Yet Wylie’s disdain was not solely reserved for the practices of Amazon. His damning speech to the Festival of Authors also referred to EL James’s 50 Shades of Grey novels as “one of the most embarrassing moments in western culture,” and derided self-publishing as “the aesthetic equivalent of telling everyone who sings in the shower they deserve to be in La Scala”.

Amazon did not respond to requests for comment.

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